Ofcom last week dismissed the claim that Scottish Television's output had been influenced by the Scottish Government through sponsorship of programmes.
The money came from the Homecoming budget, which promoted Scotland amongst the diaspora worldwide in 2009.
What got me about this was how the SNP was supposed to have benefited. Government money cannot be used for party political purposes and no one could point in this instance to how the SNP gained. Advertising of this nature has been half as much under the SNP as it was under Labour. What we were told was that Scottishness was being promoted, and jings, crivvens, by jove, gosh, the Bill was knocked off the schedule and Scottish programmes were on instead.
Said the Tories at the time in February:
“The Government has a multi-million-pound advertising budget. It must be used for the public good not party political advantage.
“We also need to know whether the SNP Government had a role in removing popular programmes, like The Bill, from our screens.”
Labour and the Lib Dems also joined in. They seem to think that just because a programme is Scottish, it’s an SNP thing. Yet they will all claim to be Scottish parties, and bristle at any slight comment which may question their patriotism.
By their works ye shall know them.
One final thought - this complaint to Ofcom came in the lead up to the general election, a campaign which was defined by the leaders debates between the Tories, Lib Dems and Labour. So at the same time as those three were being boosted by basically free advertising on the BBC, ITV and Sky, Ofcom were deliberating this frivolous complaint about the SNP.
When was the bill popular? In the 90's?
Posted by: Asim Ali | 02 August 2010 at 05:51 PM